Rush hour in Atlanta has now entered the 18th hour....

jsxtreme

jsxtreme

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From Jalopnik:

http://jalopnik.com/atlantas-roads-are-a-frozen-hellscape-of-abandoned-car-1511436009

Winter weather has left the City of Atlanta and surrounding areas, already prone to gridlock, in a condition of almost historic transportation disfunction as the infrastructure designed to keep the roads clear has failed at almost every step. Students are trapped in schools, thousands of motorists are trapped in cars, and the governor is sending in the National Guard.

Yesterday's rush hour is entering its 18th hour as people still haven't made it home. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that students who needed a bus to get home are sleeping in gyms and motorists have abandoned their cars by the hundreds to sleep wherever they can find shelter, including churches and the aisles of grocery stores.
This isn't surprising to us given that we named the city the second least-prepared for winter earlier this month.
Making matters worse, the trucks from the Georgia Department of Transportation [GDOT] are battling the same traffic and ice that everyone else is and can't get to where they need to clear the roads.
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How's sleeping on the floor at work treating you Ryan?
 
That is just ridiculous....
To have no preperation at all for the snow is bad

They saw this was coming how did they react by doing nothing?
Makes no sense to me
 
How will they survive in those near freezing temperatures? :rolleyes: It's going to be back up to 60 there this weekend...I'm not going to feel sorry for them.
 
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I'm going to pull this one out...the old IT adage:

"Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part"
 
AutoEuphoria said:
How will they survive in those near freezing temperatures? :rolleyes: It's going to be back up to 60 there this weekend...I'm not going to feel sorry for them.
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Hard to feel sorry for them since there was so much warning, but it was about 10* there last night.
 
AutoEuphoria said:
How will they survive in those near freezing temperatures? :rolleyes: It's going to be back up to 60 there this weekend...I'm not going to feel sorry for them.
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It was 10 degrees this morning when I walked outside of my office. wind chill is at 0. I bet you will feel sorry for the people when they are frozen to death right?
 
Exactly, though...they knew it was coming. They chose to ignore it and got stuck. That's not something I have a lot of sympathy for...it's like the people who don't evacuate when a hurricane is coming, only this requires even LESS effort, as it just means not going out. Call in to work (I'm sure they would understand), or don't go to the mall or to the gym. If you have no choice then at least prepare yourself mentally for what you have to do - you can't go out and drive 70 everywhere like you normally would. I'm sure it's a difficult thing to wrap your head around if you rarely have to deal with it, but damn...if the news told me that it was going to be 120F with 100% humidity out, I wouldn't go outside in a sweater and I'd make damn sure I was prepared to deal with it, wherever I was. Again, their lack of planning (not just the individuals, but the counties as well) got a lot of them in trouble.
 
stalked_R/T said:
It was 10 degrees this morning when I walked outside of my office. wind chill is at 0. I bet you will feel sorry for the people when they are frozen to death right?
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It would suck if anyone froze to death because of this, but if you are out and you know it's going to be cold as shit, you know the roads are going to be bad, you know that your road commission has no way of handling the conditions, and you know that virtually nobody has any experience driving in those conditions then you can at least guess that something like this MIGHT happen, and should dress for the occasion...at least pack a blanket or something...or stay home! I may be in the vast minority, but I just have little sympathy for people who get into trouble like this because they didn't prepare for the possibilities.
 
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To clarify, there are 6 snow plows for a city of 6 million people. The intial report from forecasters was that the storm would pass to the south. Far enough to the south that there wasn't an initial concern. By the time they adjusted the report it was too late. The storm hit extremely fast after the adjustment. My wife went into Target and came out about an hour later. In that hour, an 1/8 in of ice was already on the ground. It took her almost 4 hours to go 3 miles and we live 30 miles north of the city. The problem stemmed from many things.

Because of bad forecasting, schools didn't close. When they adjusted the forecast (around 11 AM) schools announced they were closing at noon. half the population of Atlanta started for the doors to get home to get their kids. The storm hit around noon.
Companies then realized they were in trouble and sent everyone else home sometime between noon and 1. By then it was too late.
You have no means of controlling the conditions of the roads.
You take ice + snow + people who see snow once every 3 to 4 years and add very steep hills and an inability to prep the roads and you have a disaster.

I used to laugh at the reaction to weather down here thinking it was funny how a city could shut down from 3 inches of snow for days. I also could never grasp the mentality of abandoning your vehicle. Then I drove yesterday. It was like nothing I had ever driven in before. There is no way to properly plan an attack on a steep ass hill covered in ice and packed bumper to bumper with cars. You're screwed. After 4 hours and only going maybe 3 miles I turned around and went back to work. Gas stations are out of gas, restaurants are closed. There are currenly about 20 of us in the building right now and we have water and protein bars. The hospital across the street has stopped feeding us (I work for the hospital system) because the food is necessary for patient care and this is expected to last another 48 hours.
 
AutoEuphoria said:
Exactly, though...they knew it was coming. They chose to ignore it and got stuck. That's not something I have a lot of sympathy for...it's like the people who don't evacuate when a hurricane is coming, only this requires even LESS effort, as it just means not going out. Call in to work (I'm sure they would understand), or don't go to the mall or to the gym. If you have no choice then at least prepare yourself mentally for what you have to do - you can't go out and drive 70 everywhere like you normally would. I'm sure it's a difficult thing to wrap your head around if you rarely have to deal with it, but damn...if the news told me that it was going to be 120F with 100% humidity out, I wouldn't go outside in a sweater and I'd make damn sure I was prepared to deal with it, wherever I was. Again, their lack of planning (not just the individuals, but the counties as well) got a lot of them in trouble.
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AutoEuphoria said:
It would suck if anyone froze to death because of this, but if you are out and you know it's going to be cold as shit, you know the roads are going to be bad, you know that your road commission has no way of handling the conditions, and you know that virtually nobody has any experience driving in those conditions then you can at least guess that something like this MIGHT happen, and should dress for the occasion...at least pack a blanket or something...or stay home! I may be in the vast minority, but I just have little sympathy for people who get into trouble like this because they didn't prepare for the possibilities.
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The initial forecast had us getting rain till maybe 5 pm. They a possible flurry with the snow arriving sometime early Wed morning. The majority of the storm was supposed to pass far to the south and not hit for almost 18 hours from the time it did hit. You can't blame the city for thinking they had plenty of time. This isn't a matter of a couple bad businesses saying people had to go into work. We were all under the impression we had almost a whole day before the weather would turn bad.
 
Everything I read and heard had pretty much the entire south getting ice on Tuesday. Remember I texted you and said you guys were fucked and then you replied that it was going to stay south of the city? :lol:

How the wires got so crossed down there I'll never know. Sounds like I was more informed about it than any of you.

You seem cranky Ryan. :nayner:
 
Well, the good news is it's almost over. High today of 35...high tomorrow 40. High Friday is 54. Seems like everything should be back to normal in a fairly reasonable time. Meanwhile, I'll just be here freezing my balls off. Warmest day is tomorrow...high of 20. Think of us when you're back in shorts.

And yeah...I was hearing the same reports. Seems everyone else in the country knew except you guys down there...all in hindsight now, but hopefully they will develop some kind of plan to deal with this kind of situation in the future, rather than burying its head in the sand for another 3 years until the next time.
 
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jsxtreme said:
Everything I read and heard had pretty much the entire south getting ice on Tuesday. Remember I texted you and said you guys were fucked and then you replied that it was going to stay south of the city? :lol:

How the wires got so crossed down there I'll never know. Sounds like I was more informed about it than any of you.

You seem cranky Ryan. :nayner:
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Just heard the red cross is sending in emergency help. Here's what they've gotten together so far..

Whambulance.jpg
 
I got real cranky when Steph and Jayden were in the weather for several hours trying to get home. People mocking this as stupid are just uninformed. While there is plenty of blame to go around for the way this has been handled throughout by the local government, the one thing that isn't to blame/ridicule are the people who are affected by it. We had very little warning that this would hit when it did or how it did.
 
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